Leverage the power of data with Infosys Consulting

Leverage the power of data with Infosys Consulting

The vision to reinvent your enterprise to compete in a digital world is the focus of Infosys Consulting who unlocks the power of disruptive technology

The vision to reinvent your enterprise to compete in a digital world is the daily focus for experts at Infosys Consulting who unlock the power of disruptive technology to make this dream a reality.

As enterprises dust themselves down from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are taking a long, hard look at their complex legacy landscapes and seek the help of Infosys Consulting to help them modernise their core systems to accelerate innovation and drive growth.

“The digital race is on”, says Thomas Vogt, Partner of Infosys Consulting - the consulting arm of the tech powerhouse Infosys - one of the top five global IT service brands which operates in 46 countries, generating revenue of more than $13bn.

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. For nearly four decades, the company - which boasts more than 250,000 employees - has expertly steered its clients to navigate their digital transformation.

In 2004 Infosys Consulting was created with an aim to help enterprises pursue a path of smart digital transformation and focus on all enterprises from financial services to retail and life sciences.

“The world of business has reached a tipping point, driven by disruptive technologies,” said Vogt, who has 25 year’s experience working within the IT industry.

“Companies may find themselves at a crossroad where they must choose to embrace digital transformation to evolve, reinvent and reimagine their businesses or be left behind.

“Companies who want to remain relevant in a digital-first world must leverage the power of data and digital technologies to accelerate their business growth, unlock a new paradigm of decision-making and customer experience – because whether they like it or not, the digital race is on.

“We help our clients create digital roadmaps, strategies and solutions and execute their digital transformation to leverage growth and make them agile to future challenges,” said Vogt from his office in Munich, Germany.

“Our consultants are industry experts and help our customers to lead complex change agendas or transformation projects with new technology and disruptive technologies.”

According to Stefan Ley, Associate Partner at Infosys Consulting, there are two unique and proprietary tools in Infosys armour; Value Realisation Methodology (VRM) and Manufacturing Operations. Value Execution (MO.VE) is helping to drive the digital transformation of their clients.

Digital core solutions

Infosys Consulting helps enterprises augment their core digital capabilities allowing them to become agile to market trends and evolve over time, often overcoming a complex legacy landscape that dates back many years. 

By augmenting the digital core, which is made up of a set of systems used for processing transactions from sales orders, production planning, procurement, manufacturing execution, logistics, shipping, billing and financial data, a company can augment their digital capabilities and bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds.

“When we talk about the digital core, we refer to the system that drives the business transactions in a reliable, fast and cost-effective way,” said Vogt.

Infosys Consulting focuses on two aspects of the digital core, which begins with an enterprise being digitally-ready and moves to ensure it has a lean core to ensure it remains agile in the future.

According to Vogt, a company needs to be digitally ready with an open architecture, data model, including digital data objects. “The architecture has to allow interoperability and the ability to connect third-party and cloud solutions along with Integration via APIs and connectivity via open standards.

“Secondly, the core needs to be lean core, which is going back to standard, to reduce the core to essential business transactions only with a recommendation to keep all customer-specific solutions and extensions in the cloud.

“This results in higher standardisation, lower cost, increased flexibility and time to adapt to new digital solutions and features coming up in future, which you might not have on the radar,” commented Vogt, who is responsible for the SAP practice in the DACH region (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) and for manufacturing customers in Europe.

Power of VRM and MO.VE

The two proprietary tools in Infosys armour VRM and MO.VE are helping navigate their digital transformation, said Ley. “We are very proud to have developed the tool VRM, which helps our clients in three ways:

  • Constitute the link between the profit and loss and the business processes of an enterprise via so-called value diagrams, which helps the client execute the program.
  • Quantify the benefits of operational improvements.
  • Link the identified benefits to measurable KPIs that allow companies to constantly track and trace the improvement progress to create a robust business case that delivers a high value at a lower cost.

“MO.VE is a business transformation package for the manufacturing industry that comes along with a complete set of pre-defined deliverables for the first phases of a transformation program,” said Ley.

“If we are starting with a client working on a transformation, MO.VE means we are not coming with an empty set of templates to be filled in, but we have a set of pre-filled templates, which is industry-specific which gives you a real jump-start into any transformation program. 

“These are not standalone deliverables - or accelerators as they also called - from here and there but are a consistent set of deliverables that we bring to the table and that creates the big value of MO.VE.

Digital-ready data from SAPS/4HANA 

Infosys Consulting uses SAP S/4HANA to build a lean digital core for their customers as they consider it to be the best product suite for a digital transformation and allows enterprises to be digitally ready.

“SAP S/4HANA is designed for the digital core concept with a very dedicated data model and it has the ability to process large amounts of data in a very short time, much faster than we were used to in the past,” said Vogt. 

“It also allows the integration of features into the cloud for individual application developments, machine learning (ML), automation and Internet of Things (IoT). You can either use the SAP cloud platform, or you can connect to the cloud solutions from classical hyperscalers. It is very rich in the business processes, standards and functions, which means the essential business transactions can be delivered out of the box and enjoy the other advantage of being digitally ready and enjoy connectivity.”

Vision into a reality

According to Ley, many enterprises tend to have a broad vision of their digital transformation. “We are experiencing enterprises struggling with turning that vision into reality and harvesting the benefits of a real digitalisation. I came across one company that just said ‘we want to become a data-driven company’ - but what does that mean in detail?

Three challenges Ley sees companies struggling with include:

1 Identify concrete opportunities where the enterprise can benefit from digitalisation

“ One example is to turn unstructured data into structured data so you can further process it and another advantage is this ability of the mass processing of data to make processes more lean and efficient.”

2 Managing the change in an organisation

“It’s not enough just to say we have a vision to change our organisation - you need to take the people with you on this digital journey and help them embrace this change,” comments Ley.

3 Robust business case 

“The ability to create a robust business case for the digital transformation with tangible, measurable benefits – especially if you have already an integrated ERP solution like SAP ECC in place.”

In order for a company to harvest the advantages of digitisation, Ley points out that assuming the broad vision is already articulated, enterprises need to do the following:

  • Break the vision down into concrete objectives, process design and operational levers to make the vision tangible for people to understand.
  • Leverage the vast experience and company-specific knowledge of the employees.
  • Combine the inside-out view of its employees with the outside-in view of consultants as an incubator both on the technology and business side.
  • Determine the tangible benefits that can be derived from the digital transformation and provide measurable KPIs to track and trace the execution.

Competitive edge

A local presence, platform developments and growth through acquisitions has propelled the company and given it a competitive edge in the market.

“We are proud to be recognised by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top 100 most sustainable companies and we are also listed as one of the most ethical companies in 2021, which is something we really believe in as a company,” said Vogt.

Infosys Consulting follows these three steps to success: 

Global brand with local presence 

A local presence is vital for Infosys Consulting - they have invested in local talents and have representations in the US, Europe and Asia which they claim has an ‘unbeatable talent pool’.

Development of solutions and platforms

Live Enterprise and Health Insights Platform are just two examples of their developments.

Offer consulting services

Infosys founded Infosys Consulting 17 years ago via acquisitions and organic growth.

“To have these three components under one roof and a strong global footprint this differentiates us from many competitors,” said Vogt.

“Infosys started as many Indian based IT services companies with development and systems and application maintenance and management services,” said Vogt addressing what gives the company their competitive edge. 

“Early Infosys understood that this business model based on labour arbitrage would not be sustainable long-term with the upcoming cloud and SaaS solutions. To become relevant and continue to grow in the IT and technology world, you need to move up in the value chain, lead in technology and offer projects and business consulting services.”

Partnerships in focus

According to Vogt, Infosys Consulting likes to differentiate its partners in three different ways: 

  • Portfolio
  • Technology and product
  • Talent

“Given the number of technologies out there in the market, special requirements of industries and customers, and the fact there is a shortage of IT and SAP talents in the market, partners are essential for us to conduct successful transformations.

“Our portfolio partners have knowledge in either a specific industry or have a niche skill, such as being a dedicated retail or SAP FICA (FI Contract Accounting expert), we are able to utilise,” said Vogt. 

“Then we have technology and product partners such as SAP and Microsoft. We also have partners such as Panaya, Celonis and SNP that come with dedicated tools to help us in the space of data migration, process mining or helping us to analyse the system landscape of the customer.

“The third category focuses on the talent we are able to use for a specific project. Masento has really helped us with dedicated skills and talent capacity. What I really like about them is they have good access to a rich network of professionals with very good skills. 

“We utilise Masento to complement our own teams and include those people into our culture, so it is also important they adopt our methodologies. They need to have a certain degree of flexibility to work with us based on our processes as we are an international multicultural organisation. We were always pleased with those experts Masento provides to us and our projects.     

“These three sets of partners are really vital to make sure we fulfil the requirements of our customers,” said Vogt, who added that their goal is to help enterprises leverage their digital core and show them how IT plays the role of an enabler for the future.

“We drive continuous improvement by transferring digital skills along with ideas from a cross-section of industries and innovation ecosystems.”

Five steps to a lean core

Infosys Consulting helps companies modernise their core systems by following the five steps to accelerate innovation, run the business without worrying about risks and deliver design-led experiences.

Experience

Deliver design-led experiences built on a deep empathy for customers. Conquer context, content and channel to make CX your competitive advantage.

Insight

Make your data do more. Act on your next opportunity, next pitfall and next threat before you must. Get to the source of the insights instead of relying on derivatives. Leverage enterprise knowledge and sense micro-feedback to respond in an agile and meaningful way.

Innovate

Redefine possibilities by bridging the gap between your physical and digital worlds of your business through software and platforms. Drive continuous improvement with ideas from a cross-section of industries and innovation ecosystems.

Accelerate

Modernise your core systems to tackle high-frequency decision making at the speed of insights and achieve zero latency. Build a digital infrastructure that enables your enterprise to listen, learn and leverage entrenched knowledge to make better decisions with minimal intervention.

Assure

To be the catalyst for growth by solving complex cybersecurity problems, minimising risks and building cyber resilience for your businesses across the globe – digital trust.

Quick fire questions:

What top three benefits will an increased digitalisation bring to your global clients?

Thomas Vogt says increased digitalisation will enable Infosys Consulting’s global clients across industries to achieve the following:

1 - Customer centricity - through omnichannel customer interaction and true customer-driven strategy will enhance the customer experience and give a clear competitive edge.

2 - Technologies like ML and prescriptive analytics will enhance business agility and the ability to anticipate and better mitigate future disruptions and global crises.

3 - An increase in operational performance.
 

What technology trends do you see taking off in the next year?

“The fusion of IoT devices with ERP and business application systems will enable companies - especially those in the manufacturing and logistics industry - to mine and analyse vast amounts of real-time structured and unstructured data through connected sensors,” said Vogt, who pointed out this will in turn increase top and bottom lines.

“5G technologies and IoT-specific devices and technology, with low-cost and low-power consumption, will support wide-deployment across the entire supply chain. 

“However, the most exciting new trend in 2021 for ERP solutions and business applications will be the acceleration of AI and automation. The core idea behind an AI-first transformation is the aspiration for an organisation to use human-machine intelligence to solve complex problems, make better and faster business decisions, and gain better visibility of operations to create and sustain a competitive advantage.”

What message would you give to a company hesitant about starting its digital transformation?

“Companies who want to remain relevant in a digital-first world must leverage the power of data and digital technologies to accelerate their business growth, unlock a new paradigm of decision-making and customer experience – because whether they like it or not - the digital race is on,” said Vogt.

Global recognition for Infosys Consulting 

  • Great Place to Work® and Fortune have honoured Infosys as one of the Best Big Companies to Work For™.
  • Featured in Wall Street Journal’s 2021 List of 100 most sustainably managed companies in the world 
  • Recognised as one of the world’s most ethical companies in 2021 by Ethisphere Institute, US.
  • Awarded Top Employers Global 2021 certification in 20 countries across Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and North America
  • Infosys Recognised as One of the Top Service Providers Across Nordics in the Whitelane Research and PA Consulting IT Sourcing Study 2021 
  • Infosys Awarded UN Global Climate Action Award in 'Carbon Neutral Now' Category
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